What Is The Blockchain Storage Trilemma and How Do We Solve It?

You’ve heard of the blockchain trilemma describing the challenge of simultaneously achieving three critical objectives in designing a crypto network: security, decentralization, and scalability. As the rule goes, achieving all three at once is extremely difficult, with most blockchains forced to prioritize two at the expense of the third.

But are you au fait with the blockchain storage trilemma? If you’re not, that’s okay – most people aren’t, outside of projects tasked with developing web3 storage solutions. But it’s a useful rubric to know since it will grant you a greater appreciation of the challenges web3 developers face and an insight into the advances being made in addressing this lesser known blockchain trilemma.

It goes like this: decentralized storage needs to be scalable, smart contract native, and offer random access. And yes, it’s extremely hard to achieve all three simultaneously – but not impossible. Let’s take a closer look at how this works and why it matters in the design of blockchain storage solutions.

Achieving the Impossible

Blockchains aren’t the only systems whose designers must make compromises. However, the need for blockchain systems to score highly for certain characteristics, coupled with the intense competition between different web3 protocols for market share, places these trade-offs center stage. You might not know the design compromises that dictated the engineering of the Golden Gate Bridge or the Burj Khalifa, but you can instantly list the reasons why Ethereum is more decentralized than Tezos or why Solana is able to achieve greater throughput than Solana.

As for blockchain storage, while an engineering-level knowledge of how it all fits together is not required, there’s value in understanding the core principles underpinning its architecture. As the number of dapps increases and the data demands made by each increases exponentially, decentralized storage is going to become more critical than ever. Web3 requires access to dedicated storage that enables L1s and L2s to host dapps without causing main chain bloat.

The question is, can the blockchain scalability trilemma be satisfactorily solved. Or, like other famous blockchain scalability trilemmas, is a partial 2/3 solution the best we can expect?